July 11, *W4
CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
If the Ku Klux Klan Won
at the Polls!
What Use Would They Make of Their Power?�Protestant Ministers Should Lead Resistance
By Don Marquis
In the New York Herald-Tribune
(Copyright, New York Tribune, Inc., 1924)
Suppose the Ku Klux Klan were to be generally triumphant at the polls during the next decade, what use would they make of their powers?
Would they proceed to put into force ,i machinery practically eliminating Catholics, Jews and negroes from all I participation in government?
If tney do not mean that by their militant entrance into politics, just what do they mean?
This country is not a Christian country in the sense that there is any one particular creed or denomination established by its basic law. The founders of the country very deliberately and carefully provided in the Constitution against any form of state church
against any religious establishment whatever; they made it possible for any citizen to believe anything he chose, or to believe nothing if he chose to, without experiencing civic disabilities. The wisdom of tolerance, the broadest and most general tolerance, was forced upon the attention of the founders of the Republic through their contemplation of the plight of the Old World, torn and hacked by centuries of religious warfare; they were determined that a similar thing should not come about on this continent. They were determined that a man might be a Buddhist, an atheist, a Baptist, a Catholic, a Parsee, a Moslem, a Jew, without suffering for his convictions or for his lack of convictions, without giving up his political privileges.
If this policy is overthrown, either formally and frankly by a change in the Constitution, or directly nullified by political trickery, it is good-night to America and all that "America might have meant in the larger history of humanity.
The Protestant ministers of America owe it to themselves, to their churches and to their country to organize and lead a strenuous fight against the Ku Klux Klan.
The Jews and the Catholics can say nothing much without the risk of what they say being interpreted as an attack not merely against the Ku Klux Klan, but against Protestantism; they have been manoeuvered into a most [>ainful position; any defense of them-^Ives, any assertion of their loyalty to the American idea, is sure to be picked up and spread broadcast by the Klan, and misinterpreted as an offense.
In passing, it is only justice to say that the large majority of the Catholics and Jews have been singularly jiatient and tactful in the face of this organized assault.
vVill the Protestant ministers deign to accept a bit of well-meant advice Irom a person who is neither a Jew "or a Catholic nor a Protestant, but who is an American?
It is they who must resist, who must lead in the resistance to the Ku Klux Klan.
They must rise to an unaccustomed height of generosity and nobility and toleration, not only from motives of religion and human feeling and patriotism, but also from moti\-es of policy as well.
They must refuse, and make it quite apparent that they refuse, anything in the way of political advantage and political power that might come to them through a Ku Klux triumph. They must emphatically repudiate the Klan.
For if they do not lead in this fight for the protectxxi of the religious liberty oi Amerka�for the liberty of men who beheve what they disbelieve
that they may gain will be sufficient to balance the moral influence that they will lose in the American community generally.
If the zealots and bigots get control of the Protestant organization and actually succeed in disabling Jews and Catholics as citizens, and if this political victory is accepted by the Protestant organizations generally, it will be one of the most damaging victories ever won�damaging to Protestantism itself, and to America. ' For all that great mass of public opinion which is now inactive and neutral will turn against the zealot establishment.
The present situation is an opportunity for the Protestant ministers who are not contaminated by the Ku Klux influence�and these are no doubt in the majority. It is not enough for them to feel, privately and publicly, free and clean from any Ku Klux complicity. They must publicly and tirelessly, and with competent organization, fight against the spirit of intolerance and bigotry which underlies the Ku Klux Klan.
They must, in short, prevent what amounts to the practical establishment of their own church as a state church, if both their church and the state are to survive. They must know that if the zealots succeed in bringing about a temporary political triumph, that political triumph is in itself a moral defeat for its partisans.
And, after all, every church has to have a certain amount of enlightened morality in its general policy.
If the Protestant ministers get together, they can do this thing and save the country from a good many years of strife and ill-feeling. The current situation is a challenge, an opportunity, and a moral obligation. Motives of religion and patriotism, motives of practical policy, all point the way for them.
The Protestants in this country are in the majority. Well, then, let them be magnanimous. And let their preachers lead them in the way of magnanimity.
If the Protestant ministers do not seize this opportunity, then it puts the burden of the work upon the rest of us who are neither Catholics, nor Jews, nor Aunt Prudence Heckle-burys. The Jews will never try to establish a state church. And if the Catholics try to establish one, directly or indirectly, there are enough non-Catholics in the country to smother the project over night; there is no current danger there.
But there is currently a very real danger in the political triumphs of the Ku Klux Klan, which is essentially a bigoted and narrow puritanism determined to control this Republic either frankly or by indirection, and which has had an astonishing series of preliminary successes.
VANCOUVER
Mr. and Mrs. M. M. Cohen and daughter, Lottie, of Toronto, who have spent six months in California, passed through the city recently on their return trip to Toronto. While here, they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Sugarman, Shaughnessy Heights.
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W. H. Herman, Toronto, was a guest at the Hotel Vancouver.
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Mrs, Kostman, Davie Street, entertained at a miscellaneous shower Wednesday afternoon, in honour of Miss Mona Carr, a bride-elect of July.
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Mrs, I. W. Chess, Shaughnessy Heights, was a hostess at a bridge and miscellaneous shower, Saturday after-
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Moldowan, a bride-elect of July. The bridge prizes were won by Mrs. Moe Koeingsberg and Mrs. Wm. Genser. Assisting the hostess during the tea hour were Misses Sara Levin, Muriel Chess and Nell Levin.
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Mrs. 0. Kleinfeld, Winnipeg, who has been th;e guest of her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Levin, Kensington Place, left for her home.
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Harry Ablowitz, Davie Street, left Monday evening, June 30, for Los Angeles, Cal.
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L. Levi, Winnipeg, is a guest at the Hotel Vancouver.
a a a
Mrs. James Abramson entertained at tea in honour of her mother, Mrs. O. Kleinfeld, Winnipeg, at the Hotel Vancouver.
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The Vancouver Athletic (dub held an informal dance Wednesday evening, July 2, at "Wander Inn." About twenty couples motored out. The committee in charge of the affair was: Messrs, Harry Boyaner, Theo Gold-bloom, Myer Franks and W. N. Zimmer-
TOWER OF ABRAHAM THE PATRIARCH DISCOVERED
Philadelphia (J.T.A. . -That Abraham lived near the brick tower of the Ziggurat of Ur and other discoveries closely related to Biblical history are claimed in a report of C. Leonard Woolley, the noted # archeologist in charge of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, now exploring in Babylonia.
Work was recently suspended owing to the hot weather and will be resumed in the autumn. Meanwhile the scientists are busy apportioning the objects dug up by them and their crew of two hundred natives. A large part of the finds will be shipped to the university museum this summer. Dr. Woolley reports that the workmen have exposed the 7iggurat. the most imposing monument at Ur of the Chaldees, which was destroyed in the fifty century before Christ. The ziggurat, or tower, was begun, but left unfinished by Ur-Engur and his son, Dungi, kings of Ur, about 2300 B.C.
"We must conclude," Dr. Woolley says,"tbat the Ur-Engur building, whose lower part survives to-day was completed at least during his son's reign and that when Abraham lived at Ur he